Summer ML Training part two.

During last week and this week we have been running a Summer Mountain Leader Training Course with West Highland College. It's been brilliant working with twelve enthusiastic trainees and showing them everything we know about leading groups on summer walks in the mountains. We split the course into two 3 day chunks and this week we finished the course with practice dealing with incidents and accidents, self-rescue and stream crossings, and our two day wild camping expedition.

We started the expedition from Insh, near Spean Bridge. We went up to Beinn Chlianaig and Cnap Chruin doing lots of navigation training, practicing leadership and group management and learning lots about the environment and land management. There were lots of new born lambs low down on the hills and we were very careful not to disturb any of the sheep by walking slowly and keeping away from the sheep. The tops of these two hills are beatufully smooth in places with moss and lichen, making the walking very easy going. We also had amazing views onto the Grey Coires and Stob Coire Easainn.

We went down to camp on the south side of Sgurr Innse. It was all a bit rough and wet here but we managed to find enough space for all of our tents and we had a dry night. The moon was shining and there were few clouds so it was bright enough for our night navigation training. Even so, we could not see any detais in the shape of the ground so we had to see poor visibility techniques to find our way around.

Today we traverse around Sgurr Innse and climbed up Cruach Innse. Both of these corbetts are rough and rocky, Sgurr Innse in particular. We looked for some steep broken ground to practice some more safe guarding on this kind of ground and we found plenty! Again the top of Cruach Innse is short moss and lichen making the going easy. We also had some great rainbows from the sunshine and showery weather. It was cold though and the showers were of snow at 850m and above.

So our twelve trainees are now in their consolidation phase. They need to go out and get more experience and practice everything we have gone through on the course. With six packed days of training there is a lot to remember and to practice! Well done to all of you and thank you for your efforts on the course. I hope we get to see again in the future, working as mountain leaders after a successful assessment course.